Wikipedia Goes to Alexandria, Home of Other Great Reference Works

More than 600 Wikipedia contributors, administrators and fans from 47 countries gathered Thursday in Alexandria, Egypt — home to the world’s greatest library about 2,000 years ago — for their annual gathering to marvel at what they’ve accomplished, fret over what’s gone wrong and plan for the future.

The three-day meeting, Wikimania 2008, is being held within the new Alexandria Library complex on the Mediterranean Sea, a beautiful, ambitious structure that has taken up the mission of collecting and digitizing the world’s knowledge as a way of resurrecting the city’s past glory, when it was home to the ancient library that attempted — and came close — to collecting all of human learning in one place.